The Manchurian Candidate?
With the birther arguments picking up steam again, it’s not a bad idea to try and anticipate some of the new arguments that might be coming out in the next little while. Though the birth certificate controversy has been brewing since shortly after Obama announced his candidacy, the arguments have changed – a year ago you couldn’t swing a dead cyberspace-cat without hitting a blog post claiming that Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate is a forgery, but that argument has largely fallen by the wayside. Now the focus seems to have shifted to ways in which he could have obtained it from the government (other than, of course, being born in Hawaii).
One talking point that’s been popping up sporadically for a few months, but seems to be gaining traction recently, is the birth certificate of Sun Yat-sen, the father of Republican China. Sun spent a great deal of time in Hawaii in his youth, and his early exposure to Western culture (via missionaries and British and American visitors) played a part in shaping his later political views. After the islands’ annexation by the US he was able to obtain American citizenship through a fraudulent birth certificate. Though Sun was born in the Guangzhou prefecture of China, and did not visit Hawaii until the age of thirteen, he was apparently able to find enough people to submit false affidavits to the contrary, allowing him to obtain a Certificate of Hawaiian Birth.
Therefore, the argument goes, Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate means nothing – anyone can get one; all you have to do is get a few people to lie to the government and hey presto! You’re a natural-born citizen. Sounds convincing, yes?
What trips up this argument is, ironically enough, something that the birthers paid much attention to a little while ago. For a long time they’ve made much of the fact that Obama released a certification of live birth rather than a certificate of live birth; while the former is a short form that the Hawaii Department of Health just prints out and distributes, the latter is an original paper form. In other words, the certification means nothing, because it’s not a real birth certificate. The fact that Hawaii no longer releases copies of certificates of live birth does not seem to matter.
Anyway, the devil is in the details. A Certification of Live Birth is not the same as a Certificate of Hawaiian Birth. Though the program under which Certificates of Hawaiian Birth were issued was discontinued in 1972, you can still request a copy if you happen to have obtained one before then. Except you get a copy of a Certificate of Hawaiian Birth (COHB), not a Certification of Live Birth (COLB) – they are different forms with different requirements. If Dr. Sun’s COHB is any indication, a great deal of information is also left out – there was no information about the parents, for instance, which Obama’s birth certificate does contain. If Obama did obtain his citizenship through a fraudulent COHB, that would be the form posted online.
What’s more, the purpose of the COHB program, to quote the Hawaii State Department of Health, was:
… to register a person born in Hawaii who was one year old or older and whose birth had not been previously registered in Hawaii.
This utterly torpedoes the birther idea that Obama’s COLB is somehow derived from a fraudulent COHB. If you look at Obama’s COLB, the date on which it was filed by the registrar is August 8th, 1961 – 4 days after the birth date. By Hawaiian law a COHB could not be obtained so quickly after the birth; it would have had to wait for at least a year.
Of course, this will not convince those birthers who believe that the certificate itself is a forgery, that the images of it online are photoshopped, or that the state of Hawaii is part of the conspiracy to cover up Obama’s Kenyan birth – but for them, Sun Yat-sen’s birth certificate is of no importance anyway. It is only relevant to those who accept it as an explanation for the existence of an official State of Hawaii document contradicting their belief that Obama is not legitimately the President, and at least for those people, I believe there’s some hope of de-conspiracizing.
Tags: conspiracy, obama, wingnuttery
That’s your reasoning? You’re kidding, right? Do everyone a favor and avoid a career in law, I have a feeling you wouldn’t do very well.
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